


days like crazy paving

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Drabble, Drama, F/F, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One-Shots, prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 15:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18920122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: Drabbles, prompts, and other silly little things that need a place in the universe.





	1. zero spin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jolivira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolivira/gifts).



> For the lovely Joli - there's bound to be some real fluff in here someday, right?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Graham have a heart to heart...in less than desirable circumstances.

 

“Doc,” Graham said, a bit carefully. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but how are you not dead?”

“In my _honest_ defense,” she protested, hands listless at her sides, sonic hanging limply from one hand, “nothing I’ve ever licked has been radioactive before.”

“Why lick it in the first place?” he wondered, wincing as the storage room flooded with the watery red of the emergency lights. Outside, he could still hear an alarm blaring faintly. “This whole ship is a death trap.”

The Doctor kicked at the door, face twisting with faint irritation. It was deadlock sealed, apparently, whatever that meant. About as easy to sonic their way out of as a door made of wood would be, only with less potential for just kicking it down.

“Why lick anything?” she muttered. “Why _not_?” But she dragged her free hand down her face, scowling. “Stupid,” she said. “That was really stupid, all of this is _really stupid_.”

Graham agreed, personally, but she was looking sort of green, even in spite of the emergency lights, and there was a hint of concern - look, he was a grandad, he couldn’t help it - eating away at his irritation.

“Are we really stuck in here, then?” he asked, changing the subject. He glanced up at the ceiling, at the seams of metal running vertical. A proper spaceship, this. Like in all the trash he’d read as a boy, stark metal and grunge and rust and - deadlock seals. “No offense, Doc, but locked in a storage room with a bunch of radioactive metal on a ship that’s bein’ evacuated on account of its imminent collision with a sun ain’t exactly my idea of a great time.”

She threw him a withering look.

“I _know_ , Graham,” she said, stalking past him, taking in the expanse of the room with a calculating eye. “Not exactly my idea of a picnic either, this - stupid spaceship has no _air vents_ , what sort of proper spaceship doesn’t have _air vents_?” She wrinkled her nose. “Ok, so that was Plan B to get us out of here, and it just fell through.”

“What about Plan C?”

Her nose stayed wrinkled.

“Oh, you don’t mean - ” he said, feeling his face sour.

“Yaz and Ryan are still out there,” she said, stalking to the corner of the vast space. There were empty storage bins left scattered, abandoned. She took some of the metal she’d been inspecting and lifted it gingerly into one of the bins, slamming it shut and pointing the sonic at it until it locked. Graham winced at the clang as she kicked it into the corner farthest from them. “The evacuation is ongoing, it’ll take them at least the rest of today to get everyone off, and then it’s still four days until the ship gets sucked into a sun. They’re bound to come looking for us well before then.”  She paused, taking in a deep breath. “I hope.”

“You hope.”

“Don’t you hope?”

“Oh god,” he muttered, massaging the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, is it.”

“We’ll be easy to find with the life support monitors, once everyone else has gone,” she said, far too reasonably. “Now - ”

He looked up, resigned, and then confused. She was drawing a line in the dust with her boot, halfway between the two of them.

“Er,” he said.

“Consider this your do-not-cross,” she said, slapping the imaginary dust off her hands as she finished. “Go on then, scurry back. Against the wall, as far away as you can.”

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” he said. “Why am I doin’ that?”

She squinted at him. Pointed a finger in the general direction of her mouth with less chagrin than he thought was probably warranted. “Radioactive?” she said. “Not very, but still not worth getting too close to, if I were you. The metal’s safe inside the - well, inside the other metal, but I can’t very well put myself in a box, can I. I mean, I would if I could, but - ”

“What?” he protested, mostly on instinct, because mostly he was still just confused. “No.”

“ _Yes_ ,” she insisted, shooing him with her hands. “Go on.”

He took a step closer, frowning. Realizing, with a chill he didn’t quite know what to make of, that he’d never seen the Doctor sweat before. But there were beads of it lining her forehead, catching red in the light.

“But - ” he said, worry catching rough on his tongue, and her gaze flattened with exasperation.

“Oh, don’t,” she protested. “I’m an alien, and it’s my own fault. I can handle it. Promise.”

“No offense, Doc,” he said, taking a step closer, “but every time you’ve ever said that has been either a lie or a complete miscalculation.”

“Graham,” she said, and she was wearing that flat-eyed, thin-lipped face that he only ever saw when he was about to disappoint her, “sometimes what you think is being brave and noble is only you being an idiot. This is one of those times. Stay back.”

“You’re ill,” he protested, unmoving. “Or you’re going to be. I’ve seen the films. Hell, I grew up during the Cold War. I’m not gonna sit back all the way over here and _watch_.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, perfectly still in turn, and he hated it when she did that, hated it when she turned to steel. You didn’t expect it, coming from her, and then you got it and it was like getting your face dunked in cold water.  Cold, _disappointed_ water that had no qualms about frightening the pants off you to make a point. “I’ve just absorbed 1,000 rads through my tongue like an idiot, and you’re in remission.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” he said, staying where he was. “I do think maybe you should stop licking things to find out what they are, though. Ain’t that what the sonic’s for?”

“Licking things is quicker. And most people don’t just leave radioactive materials just lying about, health and safety have a field day with that sort of thing.” She made a face. “That being said, I would say this is not my finest moment. There’s blisters on my tongue. Bit worried I’ve burnt away my ability to carbon date by taste.”

“ _That’s_ what you’re worried about?”

She crossed her arms and slid down the side of her wall, feet extending out in front of her.

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“It’s just another thing the sonic can do for you,” he protested, settling uneasily on his side of the room. She wasn’t wrong, exactly, was the thing. He was in remission, and he didn’t exactly fancy the odds of exposing himself to anything that might jeopardize that. Only -

“I happen to like a hands on approach,” she said, scowling across at him, and her hair was curling damply at the temple and her face was white as chalk and _no_ , actually, he wasn’t liking this at all. “No point in having an adventure if you’re not going to touch anything, or taste anything, or try anything.”

Only it didn’t really sit all that right, did it. When that threat of exposure was, in fact, your brilliant, if slightly ridiculous, friend.

“Health and safety ought to have a word with _you_ ,” he muttered, but it was fonder than he’d have liked. “Honestly, Doc. This was all meant to be an easy in, easy out. Are you really all right?”

“Peachy,” she said sharply, arms still crossed.

“‘Cos I could toss you half a sarnie, at least.”

Her nose wrinkled.

“Pass.”

“Your loss,” he said, retrieving said sarnie from his front jacket pocket. He unwrapped it, resigned to the idea that it might be the only food he got for the next day or two. The Doctor’s nose wrinkled again at the smell and she turned her head, eyes closing. He took a passive-aggressive bite, gaze wandering again to the impenetrable ceiling. To the lack of anything remotely interesting. God, it was the boring bits of being in mortal danger that really got to you, at the end of the day. 

He ate the rest of his sandwich in silence, lost in thought. Mostly thoughts about how mind shatteringly dull it was going to be in here, while they either waited to be sucked into the sun or waited to be rescued. Normally he enjoyed a bit of peace and quiet and a chance to have his sarnie, but -

Well. Time did drag on. Especially when -

His eyes narrowed.

Especially when the most talkative person in the entire universe wasn’t bothering to talk.

“Doc,” he said, rolling up the plastic wrap his sandwich had been in and placing it into a pocket. There was no sense littering, even if everything was a few days away from being incinerated.

Her eyes blinked open. “Hmm?”

“Awfully quiet, over there on your ‘just peachy’ side.”

“Don’t be cheeky, you’re too old,” she shot back, but when she turned her face towards him he couldn’t help but wince.

“Looking a bit rough there, cockle,” he said.

“Oh - ” She glared at him, bloodless face scrunched up in irritation. “Shut up. It’s all fine.”

“Yeah, it don’t really look all that fine, though.” He frowned. “Look, all that radioactive rubbish does all sorts of awful things to humans, are you - ”

“There’s pills in the TARDIS,” she interrupted. “For exactly this sort of thing, I’ll be - I’ll be fine.”

His heart was pounding very loudly in his ears, all of a sudden. “We’re not in the TARDIS, though. And it could be days before anyone finds us, you said.”

“Well, _probably_ , they’ll find us sooner,” she said, sounding irritated. “Hopefully. Really hopefully, actually.” She took in a sharp breath. “But it’s fine.”

Graham swiped a tired hand down his face.

“Doc,” he started.

“I was lying to you, before,” she interrupted again, and she wasn’t looking him in the face. “Sort of.”

He knew better than to look too interested. He dropped his hand and raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I’ve never licked anything radioactive, but I _have_ stuck my hands in toxic goo.”

He waited a beat, expectantly, because her face was doing that sort of twisty thing it did when she was trying to decide whether to lie to you or not.

“And then died,” she muttered, after a moment, giving in to the force of his unmoving eyebrows. “Stuck my hands in toxic goo, and then I died. Story of my life, really.” She looked up at him, finally, and there was a rueful smile sliding across her face. “You want to know how I’m not dead, but the answer is that I am. Over and over and over.”

“Doc,” he said, feeling cold flood the pit of his stomach.

She squinted across at him. “Hold on. That was meant to be comfortin’. Did I do it wrong?”

“Did you - ” he sputtered. “ _Doc_.” He took in a shallow breath, watching her gleaming eyes in the dark, still squinted at him, puzzled. “How in the bloody hell was that meant to be comforting?”

“Well, I’m just saying, I’m not - I’ve died before, is all. I’m not scared. I’d pop up right as rain, mostly. Only I wouldn’t be me anymore. Or I would, but - not. Sort of.” Her nose wrinkled. “It’s hard to explain, actually, and also you’ve got three heads at the moment. It’s very distracting.” She swallowed wetly. “I told you when we all first met. I was becoming someone new, then. Becoming who I am, becoming who I was. Changin’.”

“Doc,” he said again, stomach filled with cold. “What exactly are you trying to get across here?”

She smiled at him, a bit grimly. “When it comes to radiation, Graham, the best cure is, generally speaking, prevention. Or fancy pills from the 63rd century. But, in the absence of those - ”

His throat had gone very dry.

“How long have you got?” he asked, unsure if he wanted the answer or not. Unsure if she wanted to give it to him, by the look on her face, but she plastered over it quickly.

“Three days,” she said, too quickly, too confidently. Took a shuddering breath through her nose and twisted over herself, gagging. She inched herself back upright, looking faintly irritated at the liquid pooling in her hand, dark and orange and stringy. “Okay. Two and a half days,” she amended hoarsely, still looking irritated, swiping her palm on the floor beside her. “At a push.”

“You’re bleeding,” he said grimly.

“Internally,” she protested, maddeningly, rust darkening her lips. “Technically speaking, that’s where all your blood is meant to be.”

She gagged again, and he closed his eyes, feeling like a coward.

“It’s just - ” She coughed hoarsely. Spat, and there was iron under his nose now, dark and heady and wrong at the back of his mouth. “Just alpha particles, ripping things up. Physics at work.” She sighed, and there was a muffled clang as her head settled back against the wall. “It should be beautiful. It _is_ beautiful, probably, at the molecular level. Cells are just like stars, you know. Dying and being born, over and over and over. All life is infinitesimal,” she told him, a bit too fervently, and when he opened his eyes her own were glassy and dark. Rusty, orange blood was drying at the corner of her mouth. “It can all be ripped apart. Cells and stars alike.”

“I know,” he said quietly. And he’d never felt it, really, had never understood it, not like she did, not like anyone with more than a bus driver’s understanding of basic maths and science did, but he _knew_ it, didn’t he. Knew better than most what is was like to have your cells ripped up inside you, torn up and made alien to you.

He’d known that, then, and been sure that it would kill him. He’d been sure that it would kill him, in the same way that he’d been just as sure no one would miss him. Until Grace and Ryan had come into his life, and now, well -

It made it all a bit different, didn’t it. Having something to lose.

Having everything to lose.

“You just keep on burning,” he said. “Don’t you. But we burn up and out, all of us. All life is infinitesimal, but you’re like a giant.”

“All life is infinite,” she said, contradicting herself with the illucid confidence of the very drunk or the very stoned or the very ill. “I’m not a giant. I just stand outside and watch. You’re the birthday candles and I’m the match that won’t go out.”

“But you do,” he said, watching her, and her eyes were half-lidded and her mouth was thinly pressed. “You said - you said when you die you become someone new.”

“Someone new who’s still me,” she tried, shifting, but her breath caught and her lips twisted. “I don’t - it’s like - burning up the old me to make a new me. A different me, but still a - still a me.”

“So it’s still dyin’, then.”

Sullen, aching silence, which meant that he was right.

“Is it scary?” he asked.

There was a beat of silence. “No,” she whispered, but she was lying to him.

He closed his eyes. “Are you scared now, Doc?”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “‘Not necessarily dying, for the record. My money’s on me. And on Yaz and Ryan _Generation Z_ -ing their way into the life support monitors and finding us.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said, and it was more convincing this time. “I’m not alone.”

He opened his eyes, though, and she was across from him still, wedged into a corner, knees up, lonely, and the space between them might as well have been infinite.

“It’s just, I would be afraid,” he said quietly. “I was afraid. And I was alone, at least for a while. I ain’t afraid to admit it, Doc, there’s no shame in it. You’re not saving me from it, because I lived it, didn’t I.”

He stood.

“Graham,” she said quietly, warning him away, but her lips were bloody and her skin was waxy, and he didn’t care, suddenly, whether or not she was lying. Whether or not she was dying, whether or not she was afraid, whether or not he was damning himself.

“I’m not trying to be brave,” he said, bridging the distance, stepping over the line she’d drawn onto the floor with no ceremony. “I’m not trying to be an idiot, neither. I’m just doing what I can live with.”

“What you can live with is what you might die for,” she snapped, alarmed, insistent, but her voice was a rasp and her fingers could only twitch. He settled down beside her with a groan, knees aching. “Graham, I mean this with all possible sincerity, I have killed enough people that I care about.”

“You say enough shocking things to try and scare people into doing what you want, Doc,” he said, cross, just for a minute, just for a breath, “and eventually they stop being so shocking.”

“You’ve got people who need you.”

“Ryan’s got his father.”

“His father isn’t _you_.” She shifted again, agitated, eyes fever-bright. “His father - no offense, Aaron - is sort of terrible, and I can say that, because I’ve been a terrible father. And a terrible grandfather, for that matter.” She took in a rasping breath. “You are neither of those things.”

“I know.” He shrugged painfully out of his jacket, decided to try to wrap his head around the idea of the Doc being a grandfather some other time, tucked it away with all the other odd anecdotes she never bothered to explain. “Well, I know I’ve tried my best. But it’s all luck, innit? I already knew my odds, and I doubt this’ll change the game all that much.”

“Don’t take that chance,” she insisted. “Don’t take it, I told you, I’m - ”

But she bent over herself again, burying a moan into her knee, knuckles whitening into fists.

“You’re dying,” he said tiredly, draping his jacket over her shoulders. She was shivering. He hadn’t noticed, from all the way across the room. “But that’s alright. You’re not doing it alone.”

“‘M not dying,” she mumbled into her knee. It sounded faintly petulant. “I can’t. It’s too stupid, I’d have to stay dead out of shame.”

“It’s not your fault, Doc.”

She raised her head to look at him, deadpan.

“Ok, it is a bit your fault,” he amended. “But I ain’t gonna judge you for it. You were right, before. No point in having an adventure without a bit of risk.”

“Bit of risk,” she said, and it was a hair bitter. “Well, at least it’s not fallin’ six feet off a radio tower.” She swallowed. “Because that was just embarrassing.”

“I’m not going to ask,” he said, settling back against the wall. She burrowed deeper into his jacket and slumped, boneless, against his shoulder, a bit resentfully. “On account of I really don’t want to know.”

“I’ve got more stories than you’ve got brain cells,” she rasped. “It’s your loss, really.”

“Oh, ta, thanks very much. I give you my jacket, and all I get in return are insults.”

“Not my fault you’re an easy target.”

“Says the woman who licked the first piece of unidentifiable metal she came across.”

She twisted her head to glare up at him. “I thought you weren’t gonna judge.”

“I wasn’t. ‘Til you insulted me.”

Her nose wrinkled and she wriggled into a more comfortable position, catching him in the gut with a bony elbow in what he could only assume was not an accident.

“ _Oi_ ,” he protested.

“You’re the one that came over here,” she said, finally settling. She was warm against him, a comfortable human temperature, and it sat wrong in his gut. Alarming. “At your peril, I might remind you.”

“Well, I ain’t leavin’ now,” he said, worry clambering back up his throat, “so you’re just going to have to put up with me.”

She took in a rasping breath, swallowing gingerly.

“Sorry,” she said, after a moment. “For - ” She waved a hand, and he pictured her scowling. “Oh, I don’t know. Pick something. I’m just - ”

“Scared,” he said.

“No.” Her voice was quieter now. Somewhere between a slur and a whisper. “I told you. ‘M not alone. It’s just - went to quite a bit of trouble to become who I am. Be a shame to - ”

She swallowed.

“Well, it’d be a shame,” she whispered. “That’s all. But I really would be fine, in the end. It’s you lot I’ve got to worry about. Honestly, someone sneezes on you and the next thing you know - ”

“Doc,” he said, a bit too firmly. “Believe me. I know.”

“Sorry. Of course you do.” She shifted painfully. “Which is why you should go - ”

“Doctor,” he said, wrapping his arm around her, tucking her head under his chin so it would stop wobbling, “ _shut up_.”

She tensed, and for a moment he thought she might scramble away.

“Right,” she said quietly, relaxing in increments. “Right, well. Okay.”

“You kids are gonna be the death of me,” he breathed. “Just - just let me do what I can live with, Doc.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You _licked_ \- ”

“Oh, shut up about it,” she moaned. “If Yaz and Ryan come to rescue us, you tell them I - ”

She hissed through her teeth, knuckles whitening.

“Tell them I stepped in it or something. Please?”

“Doc, no offense,” he said, “but if you live through this, I think you’re gonna have to live with it.” He let out a breathy laugh. “And we’ll all have learned a very important lesson. Just - ” His grip on her shoulder tightened. “Just hold on. Yeah? On account of we’re all a bit attached to the person you’ve become, too.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” she mumbled, but she was growing limper in his grasp by the second. “Graham. Graham, I - ”

There was an urgency to her voice that he recognized. He sat them both up, turned his face away from the blood and the bile and the iron under his nose but kept her in his grip, a comfort, maybe, but there was no escaping the sound or the way her shoulders tensed so horribly -

“I’m sure they’re coming,” she rasped, settling back against him, lips bloody. There were specks of it on her cheek, in her hair.

 _Two and a half days_ , he thought, tucking her back under his chin. Feeling his eyes grow watery, but he was old hat at worrying, wasn’t he. Nothing new, in this life. Nothing new, before. _Bloody hell_.

“I’m sure they are,” he said. “Could be a bit of a wait, though. Like you said. Maybe I could use a story or two after all.”

But her breaths were shallow, and she could only swat him on the knee.

“Oh, I see how it is,” he said quietly, taking in a shallow breath of his own.“You take my jacket, insult me and my sandwiches, and then leave me to do all the entertainin’. Well, I hope you like the Beatles, ‘cos that’s the only repertoire I’ve got.”

“Met them,” she whispered, swatting him on the knee again, weakly. “Bunch of hippies.”

“I can do a decent Elton John, too.” He swallowed, when she didn’t answer. “ABBA, in a pinch. Always meant to ask you to take me to see them perform Waterloo for the first time.”

“Next trip,” she breathed. “On the house.”

He smiled, but it was watery.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

\---

Of course, in the end, it was only a measly six hours before Yaz and Ryan finally came at the door with some sort of laser cannon, but they were still probably some of the longest six hours of his entire life.

“Took you long enough,” he said, once the smoke had cleared. “What are the Doc and I, the leftovers?” He levelled a look at them. “Did you even notice we were missing?”

“Oh, here we go,” Ryan muttered, hefting the laser cannon like it was something he planned on keeping. “You’re welcome, by the way. Not like we evacuated the whole entire ship by ourselves _and_ came to rescue you.” He squinted. “Are you - _snuggling_?”

“Oh my god,” Yaz said, absently swatting him on the arm as she stepped closer, “are you two alright? What happened?”

“You know what,” Graham said, patting the Doctor’s hand. She didn’t stir, but she would. She would, in time. He smiled.

“I think I’ll let her tell you herself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one for this week's Thirteenth Doctor fanzine prompt! You can find more deets about the zine and the cool people that run it @thirteenfanzine
> 
> (look, do I look like I know how physics works) 
> 
> (ok obvs radiation is probably slightly more complicated than what i gleaned from my fifteen minute wikipedia browse but the moral of this story still stands, I think??)
> 
> (don't lick anything, kids) (and thank you for reading!)


	2. only human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is trapped. Yaz is less than sympathetic.

 

“I can't do this.” Watery eyes bored into her own, pleading. “Yaz, please. Please don't make me.”

Yaz took a deep breath, steeling herself.

“It's only six hours,” she said, trying for patience, reaching for it admirably. “I'll be back this afternoon, and then we can – we can. I dunno. Do a jigsaw or something?” she offered, a bit lamely. “Watch some telly? You can do that right now, you know, I showed you where all the remotes are.”

“Daytime telly?” The Doctor's voice cracked with betrayal. “You want me to watch _daytime telly_?”

“Well, you can't come with me to work,” Yaz reminded her, feeling a headache start to build at the nape of her neck. “And the TARDIS won't let you back in until she's finished fixin' herself. This is what people do when they're laid up, they sit on the sofa and they watch daytime telly and they drink a lot of tea.”

“I am not laid up. I'm – _stranded_.”

“Oh?” Yaz put her hands on her hips. “Walk from here to the kitchen without fallin' flat on your face and get back to me on that.”

“It's only a _small_ traumatic brain injury. Not my fault the world keeps moving without me.”

“You fell all the way from the library into the arboretum,” Yaz pointed out, absently rubbing her own elbow, where she'd been unceremoniously bashed into a column. “You might have told us about the artificial gravity before it got all topsy-turvy on us, you know.”

“Fallen from much worse,” the Doctor protested. “Through that train, when we first met. Jumped out a plane one time when it was shot down by Zygons, that went perfectly well. Fell from the atmosphere through a glass ceiling once, I was fine. From the top of a radio tower – ”

She paused. Yaz frowned.

“And?”

“Well. Okay, so I did die _once_ – ”

Yaz stopped her with a hand, and massaged her forehead with the other. “It's too early in the morning for a conversation like this,” she said tiredly. “Look, you're stuck here, okay? Just for a few hours. I'm sorry there's nothing to do, I'm sorry my parents aren't here, but just – don't touch anything, don't mess with anything, just – _rest_.”

“Should've stayed with Graham and Ryan,” she muttered darkly, flinging herself back onto the sofa and bringing the blanket Yaz had given her up to cover her face. “ _Their_ house is loads of fun!”

Yaz closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Graham wouldn't let you stay with them,” she said, only mostly through her teeth, “because the last time you did you landed the TARDIS on the table in the sitting room again and rewired the entire kitchen so all of the appliances would only play ABBA songs.”

The blanket came down. “That was an improvement.”

“You can't do that here, Mum and Dad would kill me. And then maybe also you.”

“Oh, come on,” the Doctor pleaded, and normally those eyes would have worked to devastating effect, but Yaz had seen firsthand the havoc wrought in Graham's house the last few times the Doctor had dropped in on Earth and she'd spent the last day or so trapped in a ship which was capable of malfunctioning on about six different dimensions and for which there was apparently no safety manual. She was immune. “There must be something you need me to do round here. Fence painted? Printer repaired? I could do the washing up. Have you got a football?” Her gaze grew serious. “Do you need the vacuuming done.”

“You can barely stand,” Yaz protested. “What's wrong with just – hanging out for a few hours? Read a magazine,” she said. “Do a Rubik's cube. I could – d'you want a colouring book?”

“A _magazine_?” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “I don't – do magazines, I don't do sitting about! Sitting about is for boring people!” She dropped the blanket back over her face in despair and her next words were muffled. “All of time and space out there, waiting, and you lot sit around in malls and on sofas and drink frappuccinos and read _magazines_ – ”

“You're just – describing capitalism,” Yaz said, frustrated. “Humans haven't always been like that.”

“Oh, _yes you have_ , give a human being a place to sit and nothing to do and they'll go right to town, it's been the same since before you lot started having actual brains – ”

“Oi! You can't just start insulting all of humanity 'cos you've got a bit of a headache! And for the record,” Yaz said, crossing her arms, “ _all of time and space_ has currently locked you out while she refurbishes, so you're stuck here with the rest of us.”

The blanket came down again. “I can't do it,” the Doctor protested. “I like – popping in for tea and then _leaving_ , I can't – life in a straight line is impossible. Unthinkable. I can't do it, I'll go mad.”

“Six hours,” Yaz reminded her, frustration starting to simmer in the pit of her stomach. “It's just six hours.”

“Six hours of daytime telly and magazines, the _pinnacle_ of human boringness – ”

“If we're so boring to you, if our lives are so simple, then why bother with us at all?” she finally snapped, twisting her hair back into a bun. “Look, I've got to go to work. Don't break anything,” she said, more tetchily than she meant, stalking to the door. “I'll be back later.”

“ _Yaz_ ,” she heard as she grabbed her jacket from the wall hook, and it was apologetic enough that she almost turned around. But her elbow was throbbing and the back of her neck was tense and her jacket was already halfway on, and the Doctor knew where she kept the biscuits, and so she ignored the pained shuffle of blankets behind her and slid out the door before she had to deal with the aftermath.

She was only human, after all.

 

 

She returned home to the smell of pakora frying, to the afternoon sun creeping in through the blinds. There were two cups of tea left abandoned on the kitchen table, and at the stove Nani was chopping herbs, one eagle eye on the saucepan, the other on the Doctor, sleeves rolled to her elbows, up to her wrists in batter.

“Yaz!” She turned her head to grin, and there was a hint of life to her eyes, colour in her cheeks. “We're cooking!”

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said, torn between amusement and confusion. And a small amount of trepidation, wrought by a combination of Nani's sharp eyes and sharper memory and the thought of the Doctor anywhere near a combination of sharp objects and boiling oil. Even when she _wasn't_ half concussed. “Nani. I didn't know you'd be over.”

“I thought I'd surprise you,” Nani said, glancing over her shoulder, and her eyes were warm but her face was hard to read. “I didn't know you had a friend staying.”

“Right, uh. The Doctor.”

She smiled. “Oh yes. We've met.” Yaz felt the back of her neck prickle, but before she could say anything Nani set down her knife and tottered over. “Between you and me,” she said lowly, eyes twinkling, “she's a terrible cook.”

“Enthusiastic, though,” Yaz pointed out, watching her painstakingly spoon more batter into the pan, nose wrinkling in concentration. A fond smile crept across her face, in spite of herself.

“Oh, yes,” Nani agreed. “And just as eccentric as ever.”

Her neck prickled again, and she looked down at her grandmother, frowning, but –

“What?” Nani looked back at her, deadpan. “She's not the sort of person one easily forgets.” Her face softened into a smile, and she reached up a wrinkled hand to pat Yaz on the cheek. “Neither are you, _beti_.”

Yaz felt her mouth fall open, but the smell of burning pakora interrupted that increasingly alarming train of thought.

“Umbreen?” the Doctor asked casually, and Yaz caught her eyes squinting in consideration. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”

Her grandmother rolled her eyes fondly.

“Why don't I take over?” she suggested, moving back over to the stove and fluttering her hands at the Doctor until she moved. “You look tired, Doctor.”

“Oh, no, I'm fine, happy to help – ”

But Umbreen was a master of polite dissuasion, and the Doctor was no match.

“I insist,” she said firmly, taking the spoon. “Go sit down. Why don't you ask Yasmin about her day?”

The Doctor blinked, foiled, and Yaz watched, fondly exasperated, as her face flitted through a series of expressions before finally landing on acceptance. She wiped her hands carefully on a dish towel.

“Or I could do that,” she said, a hair sheepish. “Sorry. Last bit of culinary training I had was in pre-revolutionary France, and let me tell you – ”

“No, it wasn't,” Yaz said loudly. “Because that would be impossible.”

The Doctor blinked again and then pressed her lips together, chagrined. She cleared her throat.

“Right. Um.”

Yaz sighed and pulled the pins out of her hair. “Come on,” she said, swallowing back a yawn. “Let's leave Nani to it, she's the expert. D'you want to sit on the balcony?”

“Sure.” Tentative.

Yaz sighed again and left her hair pins on the kitchen table, sliding open the balcony doors with a familiar screech. The balcony chairs were rickety and always a bit dust-covered, but the afternoon sun was warm and they were positioned in just the right spot to catch the light.

“Your grandmother's quite the character,” the Doctor said, settling gingerly into a seat.

Yaz lowered herself into the other one. “I think she thinks the same thing about you.” _But that’s a problem for another day_.

“Does she?” The Doctor gazed out over the fence. “I'm a tiny bit afraid of her,” she admitted, face scrunching.

Yaz chuckled, despite herself. She pressed her lips together, contemplative.

“Sorry,” she said. “For leaving like that, earlier.”

“No, no,” the Doctor protested, frowning, “don't apologize, I was – rude. I don't like feeling trapped,” she said, like it was some kind of admission, like it wasn't one of the most immediately obvious things about her. “Shouldn't have taken it out on you. I just – ”

She settled back in her chair, face pinching.

“It's okay,” Yaz said, finding herself believing it, too. She wasn't exactly one to mince words when she was irritated, either. Staying cross would be a bit pot, kettle.

“No. It's not.” The Doctor tilted her head back and closed her eyes, foot tapping as she thought. “I quite like humanity, you know, on the whole. Think you're all brilliant, though I stand by my thoughts on magazines.”

“You don't have to justify it all me to me,” Yaz said, shaking her head. “We must look impossibly tiny to you. Silly little apes, just – goin' about. Doing things.”

She shot up, eyes opening. “ _No_ ,” she protested, offended on Yaz's own behalf, Yaz thought. “No, I think you're – giants. Short lives, but you fit an impossible number of things into them. You get yourselves into a right mess constantly, I'll admit, but you – you invented calculus and Jammy Dodgers and ten-pin bowling and human rights law, that's – ” She trailed off, meeting Yaz's gaze with that odd, penetrating sincerity. “You know, where I'm from, my people thought you were ridiculous. Silly little apes, just like you said. They were always too busy being boring to see everything you were doin' right. Humanity – embraces chaos,” she said, and her voice was fond and – admiring, even. “You try to contain it sometimes, with bureaucracy and town hall meetings and big long lists, but you always fail. You just can't do it. It's remarkable, it's – a microcosm of the universe, here.”

“Were,” Yaz said carefully. “You said 'were'. Past tense. Doctor – ”

Their held gazes broke and she glanced away, mouth flattening.

“It's not gone,” she said, after a moment. Quietly. “Not anymore. It's just – out of reach. Probably for the better.” She looked up and she was smiling again, fond. “Like I said. Boring, stodgy old lot. Lots of rules, no time for chaos. But I like a bit of chaos, me, so – I've always liked it here.” She sat and thought for a moment. “Feels a bit like home, after all these years.”

“But you'll never stay,” Yaz said, trying to figure it all out, frowning mildly. She leaned forward, thinking, forearms to her thighs. “You couldn't even do six hours.”

“I've stayed before,” she said. “In the seventies, I was exiled here for a bit. And I spent a few decades teaching, not too long ago, I was – lookin' after something. Someone. I can do it, I just – ” Her hands twisted together, and it was an odd, unusually anxious-looking movement. “Harder to stay still, in this body. I need – something to do, I need a purpose.”

The Doctor, Yaz thought shrewdly, was the sort of person that couldn't bear to catch up with herself. Maybe that was the problem. Or maybe it wasn't a problem at all, maybe it was just – a feature. Maybe she was only human too, in her odd, ancient, alien sort of way.

“But I'm sorry,” she went on, “if I seemed ungrateful. I'm really not, I just – well, with the TARDIS on lockdown, I – ” Her lips pressed together again, and Yaz could feel it from where she was sitting, the tension in her leg, her foot caught mid-tap. “Can we do a jigsaw now?”

“Course we can,” Yaz said, standing, offering her a hand. She took it, and followed Yaz back inside, where the smell of burnt pakora had dissipated. Nani was still puttering in the kitchen, stirring a sauce on the stove, and the pakora were waiting, assembled on a plate. “But you have to find all the edge pieces, I'm rubbish at it.”

The Doctor smiled in her peripheral vision, rueful. “Deal.”

Yaz turned, an eyebrow raised, a fond smile tugging at her lips. “Deal.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today on 'Em remembers things that she wrote a long time ago and then promptly forgot about'
> 
> (this was for an anonymous prompt challenge we threw together on the fanzine discord a while ago and it was super fun - there's another on the way that's slightly less fluffy, so I thought I'd throw this one up first. Unedited, thrown together real slapdash, but, y'know. Content?)
> 
> Thanks for reading and I'd love to know what you thought!


	3. zero sum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the only way back is forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hnn a Warning: hey so this only exists because my wonderful beloved peeps in the fanzine discord PROVOKED me and therefore i'm absolved of all responsibility and fault but on that note this does contain some Major Character Death(s)??? i hate character deaths how did this happen anyway rip

If she falls apart, she does it somewhere he can’t see. 

He’d been thrown clear in the blast, pummelled by debris, scraped and gouged by scalding bits of metal, and somewhere in between the screaming and the burning and the violent ache in his chest everything had gone fuzzy and dark. When he blinks again, he’s slumped against a wall in the med bay. He can feel a bandage on his head and there’s a cup of tea cooling to his left. She’s sitting across from him and her eyes are red but her face is dry and she is very, very far away.

He knows, then.

“No,” he rasps, startling her. “No.” But the cots beside him are empty and no one is clutching his hand and there are no reassurances to fall from her lips. He knows, then.

There aren’t even any bodies.

“Take me back,” he says, something choking its way up his throat, grief thick like ash, _his boy is gone_ -  “This is a time machine. Take me back.”

He hardly ever sees her still, let alone sitting. But she’s hunched over in the chair across from him, elbows balanced on her knees, coat grimy with soot.

Unharmed. Unharmed, and he should be grateful, should be glad -

“They were vapourised, Graham,” she says, very softly. “There’s nothing to go back to.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” He’s standing, all of a sudden, and the world reels with the movement, black spots flashing in front of him, but none of it matters. He takes a step forward on shaking legs, towering. “Take me back.”

She only looks up at him. 

“We can’t go back,” she says, and there’s something in her eyes that makes him think she’s had this conversation before. 

With herself, maybe.

“Why _not_ ,” he demands, terse. 

“Fixed events,” she says, rote, hands in her lap. “Saving them could break the universe.”

“I don’t give a damn about the universe.”

“Well, I do.” Her voice doesn’t crack. She swallows deliberately. “I - ”

The hands in her lap are shaking, and it makes him suddenly, unaccountably furious.

“Take me back,” he tries, one last time. He’s not above begging. He’s not above anything, anymore. 

Her words are firm. She’s had hours to steel herself against him. “I can’t. Graham,” she tries, a little gentler, a little softer. “Graham, they saved thousands of lives. They - ” And she does close her eyes now, presses her lips together until her chin stops wobbling, looking sick. “I can’t change it. Not anymore. Not even for them.”

“Then what’s the point of you?” he snaps, and it’s cruel, and he is not a cruel man, or he wasn’t, but there is ash in his hair and blood under his fingernails and _his boy is gone_ - 

He is a man without a family. 

Again.

“You took them all from me,” he says weakly, and it’s not the truth, it’s bile spat from his throat, grief sharp and pointed, he isn’t thinking, he’s only - he’s only alone. He’s alone, and it’s not fair, and it should have been him, should have been her, should have been anyone else.

She doesn’t flinch or protest. 

“Do you want to go home?” she whispers instead, like it’s all she can offer.

They’d left on a Saturday in May. It had been sunny and bright and he’d promised to take everyone for ice-creams when they returned, because he was a granddad and that was what they did. He thinks of that perfect, sunny day, and of the aching absences on either side of him. His house will be empty, now. His house and his bed, because he is a man without a family. 

He’ll have to tell Ryan’s father. His workplace. Oh god, and the Khans. Tell them all the truth or a lie, and neither will save them, not really. And then that empty house will be all that remains of this life and his family and what will be the point of it all? What will be the point of _him_?

 _Home_. Only it’s not really, anymore. 

It’s kinder, maybe. To leave that Saturday the way they left it, sunny and bright. Leave the truth for later. Run from it, for now.

He looks down at her, feeling stretched thin, pulled taught like a string. Teetering on the edge of something awful, only that’s impossible. There’s nowhere left to fall. 

“No,” he says. “But I don’t want to see you.”

Cruel or not, he can’t help what he feels.

She gazes at him wordlessly, her face dull and flat and far away, and stands. He could ask her for anything right now, he thinks, watching that face, and she would give it to him. Anything except for the only thing he actually wants.

She touches his shoulder, and her hands are unnaturally cold, even through his jumper. 

“Then you won’t,” she says, quietly. 

 

#

 

He doesn’t.

He traipses through the TARDIS like a ghost most days, and the irony isn’t lost on him, and he never sees her. He wanders for miles and miles sometimes and never sees her. They pass like ships in the night, and time passes, but it doesn’t. He can’t seem to make the seconds count, like this. Every moment has a touch of unreality, a grey, slimy film that he can’t disturb. Every breath he takes is too loud. The air on board the TARDIS had always felt slightly raucous before, joyful and busy and never still, never quiet, never silent. Now he can hear a pin drop, wherever he goes, against the soft groaning of the engines. If he thinks too much about it - 

Well.

They land sometimes, he thinks, but he never sees her leave and never sees her return. 

(She sleeps sometimes, though. He hears the screaming, echoing down the corridors.)

Time passes, but it doesn’t. He lives in numbness, in carefully cultivated apathy, and he takes very long naps and he doesn’t think about what he’s left behind. He doesn’t think about what’s waiting for him. He leaves things where he finds them - a Gameboy, a knitted cap, a leather jacket, a bottle of nail varnish - and lets them gather dust. He doesn’t leave the TARDIS, and the days meld into weeks, maybe even into months. He thumbs through books, but the words don’t penetrate. He wanders wherever his feet will take him, and the TARDIS shows him all sorts of places - pools and gardens and old, dusty rooms. Once, somehow, impossibly, a whole grassy hillside, complete with the sun shining down on the top of his head. 

He’d stayed there for hours, sitting. It had been warm. 

“You’d have liked this,” he’d said, the first words to leave his mouth for weeks and his voice had been a creaking rasp. “Both of you.”

He wanders and wanders and he still never sees her. But there are cups of tea that find their way to his bedside table, ear-marked books and magazines. Knitting needles and some yarn, once, memorably. His prescriptions get refilled. Vitamin tablets appear like magic in the kitchen. It’s like living with a very considerate ghost, only it’s all flavoured subtly with guilt and he doesn’t much care for the taste.

But he doesn’t see her.

 

#

 

He doesn’t see her for weeks, because the Doctor keeps her promises, except for when she doesn’t. He doesn’t see her for weeks, and so when he does, it shocks him so badly he almost drops his tea on the floor of the library.

She doesn’t see him at first. She’s standing between the sofa and the fireplace, looking down, and when he moves closer he realizes she’s staring at a jumper abandoned on the floor like it might reach out and bite. A jumper and another bottle of nail varnish. Yaz had left them behind her like a trail of bread crumbs, wherever she sat down.

She doesn’t move. She doesn’t cry. Only stands there, cornered, like she can’t quite bring herself to go past it. Her hair is so long now it nearly touches her shoulders, and it hasn’t seen a brush in days. Her coat hangs off her, ragged, and when she finally turns to him, her eyes gleam in the half-light like some sort of wild animal. It’s a hungry sort of look.

He’s never seen her drink. She doesn’t drown herself in drugs or gambling, doesn’t spend her days half-asleep, like he does. But whatever this is, whatever violence she’s drenched herself in - well, it’s all the same, really, innit.

An escape.

“Where have you been?” he asks hoarsely.

She takes a moment to answer, and when she does it’s in a rasp. Neither of them have spoken to anyone for weeks.

“Toppling empires,” she says, still as a lake. “Making things right. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe.” She pauses, and he can’t read what’s on her face. There’s someone else’s blood spattered faintly on the collar of her coat, dried dark and rusty. “Would you like to come?”

 

#

 

It’s a disaster, of course.

The _Weatherby_ is a ship bound for trouble, right from the start. Failing engines, an eclectic crew, a slew of suspicious types for passengers - and that’s before they all start being picked off. It’s right up the Doctor’s alley, which is why he’s sure she picked it. Mysterious goings-on, a bit of danger, a bit of running. Familiar. It would be classic, if it didn’t all feel so wrong. 

It’s just - he keeps waiting for Ryan to crack a joke or drop something important. The Doctor reaches absently for a piece of scalding metal and there’s no hand to pull her back, no exasperated telling-off to follow. Just empty space between them both, and it’s not right, and it’s not fun.

It’s not fun, and that shouldn’t be what’s different, but it is. 

“I should have stayed back on the TARDIS,” he mutters, scalding air blowing up at him from the engine room. They’ve got about four minutes before the pressure reaches critical and they’re all flung out into space and whatever optimism he once might have had about their chances has long fled. “In fact, I’ve half a mind to go back there right now and leave you to sort this out.”

“No one’s stopping you,” she retorts over her shoulder, sharp, elbow deep in wires at the engine’s controls. “But if this ship blows, it’ll take the TARDIS with it.”

“Oh, lovely,” he remarks, matching her tone. “So you finish the job either way.”

He watches her shoulders tense but she doesn’t reply.

“Pass me the spanner?” she asks instead, extricating an arm to extend towards Zeera Ly, the ship’s engineer. Young and plucky, and her eyes are dark and lovely, and she’s been hanging on the Doctor’s every word like she hung the moon since they met. 

She passes the spanner, stepping closer. 

“Have you sorted out what’s wrong?” she asks, fingers clutching nervously at the back of her neck. 

The Doctor’s barely given her the time of day, but that odd sort of hunger hasn’t left her eyes. Behind that absent sort of kindness that she must extend without thinking, there’s something lurking that he’s not sure he wants to put a name to. For Zeera’s sake, maybe.

The Doctor takes the spanner and presses her face closer to the wires, and her shoulders are rigid and he can feel the strength of her frown from where he’s standing, three metres back. 

“Oh,” she mutters. “I’m so stupid. Can’t believe I _missed_ it.” 

“Missed what?”

“The gas that’s powering your engines,” she says, untangling herself from the innards of the controls, spanner still clenched in one hand. She turns. “Where does it come from?”

Zeera shakes her head, braids tumbling behind her. “I don’t know. That’ll be Acquisitions, I just keep the whole thing runnin’.” She frowns prettily. “Is it - ”

The Doctor has been putting on a remarkable show of charming exuberance - for his sake, or hers, or everyone else’s, maybe - but whatever cheerful mask she’s been wearing slides off her face.

“Sentient,” she says, and her eyes have gone flat. “Sentient gas. That’s your problem. Your ship’s engines have a body count. I expect it’s been doin’ it’s best to take an eye for an eye.”

Zeera shudders. “My team,” she says, breathing faster. “My team, are they - ”

He waits for a platitude, waits for her eyes to soften, but they don’t.

“I’m sorry,” she says, firmly, and her hands stay at her sides and her eyes stay still and flat. She swallows. “You didn’t know?” she asks. “Really?”

“No.” Zeera shakes her head again. “No, I had no idea. If I had, I would have - ”

“Been terminated,” a new voice says, and he’d missed the squeal of the doors opening behind them. “You’d have been terminated. Just like your predecessor.”

“Ah,” the Doctor says, arms swinging, greeting the newcomers with a smile. “You must be Acquisitions.”

Acquisitions, Graham takes the time to think, feeling awfully tired, has no idea what they’ve just stepped into.

“And you’re trespassers,” the woman at the front says, looking terribly official. “Security is on their way.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s been killing your passengers?” the Doctor asks, staying close to the engine controls. “Your crew?” Her eyes glint, and he doesn’t especially like it. “Of course, if I’m right, and let’s be fair, I usually am, you already do.”

“Step away from the controls and present your hands,” the woman says, sharply.

“Where’d you get this gas from, anyway?” the Doctor asks, not budging. “‘Cos it’s alive,” she continues, softly. “And it’s angry. It’s been leaking through the containment fields of your quaint little engine room and choking everything with a pulse.” Her fingers hover over the controls, taunting. “You’re in contravention of about sixteen species conservation acts at the moment, you know. Seven conventions on the rights of non-corporeal lifeforms, and don’t even get me started on the business regulations.” The smile stays fixed to her face. “But, anything to cut some costs. Right?”

“Step away,” the woman says again, but in fact, she’s the one taking a very sensible step backwards.

The Doctor’s nose wrinkles. “Nah,” she says. “Actually, I thought I’d do my friends a favour and widen the containment breach.” Her hands reaches for a dial on the control panel and twists with vehemence. A hissing sound fills the air, and the faces of the Acquisitions team blanch of colour. 

It’s hot, Graham thinks, sweat already gathering on his brow. Agitated. Moving quickly. It goes for the woman at the front first, and he watches her fall to her knees, hands scrabbling at her throat. Gasping.

Well, she does deserve it, probably. But his gut roils in protest and he is a good man, when he tries to be, and this is not how they do things. Not how they - did things.

“Doc,” he says.

She takes in a deep breath, barely listening. Watching the woman on the floor gasp for breath with an almost voyeuristic intensity. Satisfaction. Pleasure, even, maybe, but he can’t hardly wrap his head around it, can’t imagine it, can’t understand where it fits in.

“Doc,” he breathes, for her ears only, his hand reaching for her own. “That’s enough.”

She flinches at his touch. Like she’d forgotten he was even there. She swallows, almost guiltily. 

“Right,” she whispers. “Right. Well - right.”

She digs the sonic out of her pocket absently and points it at the dial. 

“Vented back out into space,” she says, thinly, as the hissing sound grows deeper, as the heat drains from the air. “Where it belongs. Where it was stolen from.”

“We - we didn’t,” the woman on the floor gasps.

But the Doctor only looks down at her, lip curled faintly in disgust. 

“You did,” she says, sounding tired. “You always do.” She steps away from the controls, Graham and Zeera trailing behind her. “So don’t give me a reason to come back. Come on, Graham.”

Zeera lingers beside him as they traipse out of the engine room, as they drudge their way back to where the TARDIS is parked, by the maintenance cupboard nearby. Not nearly so starry-eyed, now, and it feels heavy in his chest. That disappointment will save her, is all he can think.

“You’re leaving?” she asks. “Just like that? What about - ”

The Doctor pauses at the TARDIS doors. 

“I solved your problem,” she says. “What comes next is up to you.”

“But - ” she protests, and there’s still longing in her dark, pretty eyes. “But I - ”

“Better this way, love,” Graham tells her, as the Doctor slips inside. “Safer. Believe me.”

He slips inside, too.

“Is that what sortin’ out the universe looks like,” he asks, when the doors have closed, “when we’re not around?”

She pulls down hard on a lever as they dematerialise.

“No,” she breathes. “Of course not.”

“Is that all we’re good for? Is that the only reason you keep us around, Doc? To be your conscience, to be your little morality pets? What about the rules?”

 _Is that what they died for?_ he doesn’t ask, but the question is ground into his teeth.

“Would that make it easier?” she asks, and the tired edge drains from her. Whatever’s left is cold and flat enough to make him shiver. “Would you like to think that about me?” She takes her hands off the console. The TARDIS groans, in sympathy or in warning. “I keep you around because I _like_ you,” she says, and her voice breaks for the first time, and it should be a victory but it doesn’t feel like it at all. “You’re my friends. You’re my friends, and I wanted to impress you,” she whispers. “I wanted you to have fun, I wanted you to learn.” Her face twists. “And you - you make it easier to be kind.”

“And now?” he asks. “That wasn’t kind, Doc. It was just scary.”

Her hands fidget at her side.

“I know,” she says. “I just - I want everything to burn,” she admits horribly, wetly. “I want the universe to burn, I want - ”

She looks up at him and her eyes are wet and hungry and desperate. 

“I want what I am _owed_ ,” she says. “But I can never have it. Do you understand?”

He does. 

“You’d break the universe for them,” he says quietly.

“In a heartbeat,” she whispers. “But I _can’t_.”

The TARDIS wheezes gently, rotors whirring the background. The rest is all silence and dust and empty space. 

He could ask her for anything.

“This is a time machine,” he says. “Can I - can I just see him?”

She breaths in thinly, like she might refuse, but he knows she won’t.

A minute passes.

“Just this once,” she says. 

 

#

 

She lands them in 51st century Paris with no ceremony. Outside, it’s as crowded and busy and smog-filled as he remembers, old buildings beautiful and crumbling, the future shining and rusted in the same breath. They put on large hats and settle in a cafe across the street to watch Ryan and Yaz bicker fondly across a patio table, make ridiculous shapes with the napkins. They watch them turn their sights on the Doctor when she comes back with frozen desserts, smile broadly in the muggy sunlight.

“This was a good one,” Graham says, watching himself across the road as he insists on smearing everyone in sun cream.

“Yeah,” the Doctor says, and across the road she’s watching the three of them and smiling. Soft and secret, like she knows the universe is cruel but is doing you the favour of pretending otherwise. “Yeah, it was.”

“Does it get easier?” he asks. “Before, I had - I wasn’t - ”

The words won’t leave his mouth, but that doesn’t make them any less true. He has no one, now. No one to return to. No one to run from.

“Time,” she starts, but her voice cracks again. “ _Oh_.” He won’t look at her, for her own sake. “Time, I suppose. It’s just - time. It won’t get better, but it will get - different.”

Different. Not yet, but - one day.

He takes one last look at his boy in the sun, laughing his head off at some joke he can’t remember. One last look at Yasmin Khan, with the stars in her eyes and a smile on her face.

“I think,” he says. “I think you should take me home now.”

 

#

 

She takes him home. The TARDIS lands in his garden, five minutes from when they left, and the sun is still shining and the air is still warm. 

“You could stay,” he says, stepping into Saturday, into what’s behind and in front of him. An empty house and a dozen phone calls and police at his door and too many mugs in his cupboard. 

She smiles at him, soft and secret, and hands him her coat. It smells of chamomile and engine grease. Her touch is cold and inhuman and familiar. Her hair is too long and her face is too sharp.

“Find someone,” he says. “Find someone to be kind for. And you could stop by to visit an old man, once in a while.”

“I will,” she says. She won’t, but he won’t blame her for it.

He could hug her, but he won’t. He could take her hand, but he doesn’t. 

“Safe travels, Doc,” he says, and he watches her leave.

He makes a cup of tea in his cold and empty house and then he buries the coat in his back garden. It’s not quite a funeral, but, then - there are no bodies. Just dust, a thousand light-years from where he’s standing. Impossible to see, but he still stands outside until night falls, watching.

Out there, it’s all still happening, he thinks, gazing out into the stars. All of time at once. Their adventures have no start or end, not really.

He takes a sip of tea that’s long gone cold and walks back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep realizing I wrote things and then failed to post them - I think this is the latest and last, but I'm horrifyingly disorganized, so?? anyway, this was a prompt, it's short and messy, I kind of hate it, it's not my fault, BLAME THE FANZINE
> 
> (also you should BUY THE FANZINE~) (if you want more things.....that are much less awful than this) (@thirteenfanzine) (psst)
> 
> oh man. anyway, thank you for reading!


	4. futur simple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not the first time she’s kissed someone who’s already dead. Knowing her luck, it won’t be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoping on the fandom's recent Thorsair Boner with this meagre offering. look, I'm a simple lesbian: I see a cool hot pirate lady, I instantly stan. 
> 
> anyway, if you're behind on the Doctor Who comics, basically in the latest issue the doctor ran into her Cool Pirate Girlfriend and it's just about the coolest. I definitely recommend catching up, because they're a delight and the Corsair is SO COOL and I love her but also I have a feeling I'm going to be devastated, so, uh. In the meantime -- have some weird angsty not-quite-smut? idk man
> 
> (pssst there's SPOILERS in here for Issue #10!) (but I hope you enjoy!)

futur simple

* * *

 

She’s so used to being left alone at night, when all the humans are asleep, that once they turn in for the evening, she forgets herself. For a moment, just a moment, she loses herself in the internal console, fingers working, trying to _fix_ something. Trying to think of something other than the little boxes, something other than the future and the past, something other than the long dead smiling at her doorstep. The footsteps behind her barely even register, but it’s not Yaz, wandering towards the kitchen for late-night tea, or Ryan, in a vain search for his phone charger.

“You’ve really done the place up,” the Corsair says. She jumps, and then pretends that she hasn’t. “I seem to remember a lot of white.” She pauses contemplatively. “And a hat stand. Whatever have you done with the hat stand?”

“Kept falling over,” the Doctor says, untangling her hands from the wires she’d been buried in. She turns, and the Corsair is right behind her, far too close. She could count every eyelash, if she was that sort of person. Instead, she breathes in sharply.

This body doesn’t like _close_.

“The pretty girls haven’t changed, though,” she drawls, eyeing her with amusement. “You’ve always had a type.”

She should turn around, tear herself away from those eyes. The Corsair is _fun_ , but the Corsair is dangerous, and the Corsair —

Is long dead.

She should know better. She really, really should.

Before she can stop herself, she reaches out for a wrist. 

The Corsair doesn’t react. Only narrows her eyes thoughtfully, a smirk that’s painfully familiar dogging her lips. She’s terribly pretty, this time around. Nothing like some of her other faces, rougher around the edges, easier to take, but the smile is the same.

“Why did you decide to help me?” she asks, and in the silence that follows the Doctor listens for the sound of her hearts with a desperate, aching ear. It’s a hollow sound, pounding against her fingertips. 

But familiar.

“We’re old friends,” she says, lying, but the Corsair will expect it, because she’s always been a liar, always been a runner. Since their school days, and it’s been so long since she’s been around someone with half as long a memory as she has, someone who can recall those silver trees with the same aching impermanence —

She drops her wrist, but it’s too late.

The Corsair snags her hand with an inhuman speed and drags her closer. She towers, just a bit, tall and dark and strong and it’s almost odd for a moment, because the last time they’d been together she’d been short and stout and it was the Doctor who had towered and gangled and trembled. 

“You’ve always been maudlin,” the Corsair says, eyes tracking her, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “You don’t have to hide it from me.” Her face breaks into a grin. “I remember, you know. Even when we were young, you were a gangling stack of rules and mopiness and daydreams.” She breathes in deeply, shoulders heaving, teeth gleaming in the lowlight. “But you were still an excellent accomplice.”

Her tone is so genial that when she shoves her up against the console, hands wrapping around her suspenders, it’s a genuine surprise.

“So don’t lie to me,” she whispers, leaning in, closing the gap. Her eyes glitter. “You were always pants at it.”

Their timelines are so far apart, so tangled, so broken and twisted, that every time they touch it causes microtears in eternity. It should be a significant cause for alarm, but instead the feel of it is almost —

She heaves in a shuddering breath.

“There are some things,” she says, “that you’re better off not knowing.”

The Corsair shakes her head, miniscule. “I’m a Time Lord,” she breathes. “A runaway one, at that. I like knowing where I’m going. I deserve to know.”

The Doctor closes her eyes, mouth twisting. “I promise you don’t. _Time_ — ”

The hands move up her suspenders, reaching, grasping. Tiny fractures in the fabric of reality, like the widest sheet of glass, slowly cracking for infinity. Not enough to break. Just enough to hurt. She shudders.

“A lecture, Doctor?”

“I _don’t_ lecture.”

“Oh, you do.”

She dares to open her eyes and the Corsair grins, sharp and delicate in that pretty, pretty face, and suddenly cool hands are grasping her cheeks, working their way behind her head and there’s a leg by her waist and a body pressed close and the Corsair hasn’t bothered to remove her rapier and the TARDIS _hates_ being snogged on, but it’s too late. The console digs into her back. The Corsair’s lips are dry and she also tastes faintly of ale, but it’s not unfamiliar, it’s not —

It’s not the first time she’s kissed someone who’s already dead. Knowing her luck, it won’t be the last.

But the taste of her isn’t enough to banish the memory of her arm on someone else’s body, of the little box in her tucked-away cupboard, and her heartbeats are strange and familiar and she could be someone else, anyone else, no one else at all, and the past is never a stranger beast than when it’s shoving its tongue down your throat —

“Are you going to cry?” the Corsair asks, breaking away at her shuddering breath, just for a moment, eyes half-lidded. 

“No,” she breathes.

“Because I can work with that.”

“ _No_.”

Her hands leave the suspenders. She pulls away, and it’s a terrible/relief. Her fingers fumble with the buttons of her blouse, re-fastening them, and it’s an angry sort of motion.

“What, then,” she says, low. “Is it because I’m not him?”

“Her, now, actually,” the Doctor corrects, avoiding her gaze. “And no.”

The fingers pause. “Really?” There’s a twinge of interest in her voice, washing away the scorn. “Where’s she gotten off to, then? We used to have loads of fun.”

“Dead,” she says shortly. “And anyway, I’m married.”

The Corsair tilts her head, because marriage on Gallifrey had always had about as much institutional and moral weight to it as a parking ticket. “And where are they, then?”

She swallows. “Dead.”

The silence seeps into the space between them. The Corsair closes the gap again, lifts her chin with fingers that are too delicate to suit until she has no choice but to meet her gaze.

“And me?” 

There’s hunger in her eyes. Fear, too, but want overtakes it, smothers it, wraps around it like a snake would. The Doctor’s always been good at running, but only the Corsair was ever any good at _wanting_. And what she wanted, she took. It was always as simple as that. 

She takes what she wants from the Doctor’s eyes and swallows once.

“Dear me. Our timelines,” she says quietly, and the Doctor watches her hearts pounding in her neck with a hunger of her own, “are _very_ out of sync. You’re ancient.” She leans in closer, and her hair tickles the Doctor’s face and she smells a bit like sweat and ale and leather and it’s —

“And we’re all gone,” she says lowly into her ear, a rasp. “All of us. Aren’t we. I can see it in your face.”

She thinks of the room and the shelf and of all the pretty little boxes that had made her so angry. She thinks of her friends, sleeping deeply. Dreaming. She thinks of the war, and she thinks of how those pretty, pretty eyes boring into her own haven’t seen a lick of it yet.

“Spoilers,” she whispers.

 _Oh_ , she shouldn’t.

“Well, then.” The Corsair’s delicate hands wrap around her head again, brush the hair from her forehead with a tenderness that almost makes her weep. Her eyes are almost — _almost_ — kind. Enough to pretend. Enough to pretend, just for a moment. “No time like the present.”

What the Corsair wants, the Corsair takes. It’s always been as simple as that. And she could run, if she wanted to. It’s always been as simple as that, too. But there’s an ache that runs the length of her, some wandering loneliness that her friends will never, never fill, because they _can’t_ , and —

She shouldn’t. She won’t. She does. She will. 

She closes her eyes and the smell of ale and sweat fills her nose. Hair tickles her cheek, the skin of her neck. She tastes blood on her lips and feels Time fray like the hem of a shirt, unravel so pleasantly, shatter so prettily. Fracture upon fracture upon fracture, two ends of a line that shouldn’t meet, but it’s hard to break something that’s so broken already. 

And the dead don’t speak, but they do have lips, and if she were less of a coward she would run, but she’s a prayer to a broken stone instead, and the dead will always have their way with her.

It’s always been as simple as that.


	5. down the rabbit hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something scratching at the door.

The grate of the floor is cold under her back, and that’s her first hint that something is very, very wrong, because the TARDIS is always warm, always golden, always comfortable. 

Her eyes crack open reluctantly, gritty with sleep. Shadows greet her and the console room is grey and dull and cold, so much larger in the dark. The central rotor and its pillars loom above her like giant spiders’ legs. The shadows are deep and wide and tall and she feels impossibly small.

She exhales and her breath fogs in front of her. Sleep hangs over her like a promise. Like the fact of her awake-ness is surprising, somehow. Like she’ll be dragged back under any minute, any second, and with that thought her heart pounds a staccato, sharp against her ribcage.

 _Wake up_ , she thinks. _Wake up_.

She scrambles upward, but only makes it halfway, sliding against the console, hands scrabbling for purchase. Sleep pulls at her, sticky. Her fingers feel cramped and numb. There’s a scratching at the door.

Her breath hisses out in front of her.

There’s a scratching at the door. 

“Doctor,” she rasps, and she’d like to shout but the air is thin and her voice is weak. “Doctor.”

But there’s a mournful clanging noise that drowns her out, deep and resonant. Coming from the inside, not the outside, and it fills her stomach with dread. It’s the TARDIS, she thinks. The TARDIS, sounding a warning and there’s nothing she can do and she’s still half asleep and _there is something scratching at the door_ - 

They’d been running. The knees of her jeans are ripped and torn. Her hand is scraped, a jagged line writ in red across her palm. She can’t _remember_ - 

But without thinking, she reaches absently for her pocket. Her fingertips catch, and when she pulls out a piece of jagged glass, her reflection is warped and distorted. 

 _Wake up_ , she thinks. She clenches the glass in her hand, and the sharpness of it stings, but it’s still not enough. The darkness pulls and pulls.

“Doctor,” she whispers again, eyelids heavy. She tears her fingers from the console and catches herself on her elbows. It’s too dark, she can hardly see, there is something scratching at the door - 

The rest of them are all laid out like she had been. Dead to the world, but for the rising of their chests. Ryan’s closest to her, and she shakes him, but he doesn’t wake. Her breath hisses in her throat, makes clouds in the air, mist that wafts away into nothing. He doesn’t wake. He doesn’t wake.

Sleep pulls at her, still a promise. The glass is sharp in her hand, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough. She’s running out of time. _There’s something scratching at the door_.

“Doctor,” she gasps, dragging herself across the grate to reach her. Her face is pale and still and peaceful. She grabs her hand, but she doesn’t stir. 

Her elbows give out and she collapses against the Doctor’s chest, eyelids shuttering, the Doctor’s hand still clenched in her own. She smells of engine oil and chamomile. The strange pounding of her hearts is an unsteady staccato. 

There’s something scratching at the door.

The bell tolls again, three times, and it’s a mournful sound. 

“Help me,” she whispers, and sleep drags her back under, a promise, a threat. “Help me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case my crazed yelling about it hasn't yet reached your ears, I was so lucky to be able to contribute a little something to Thirteen Fanzine, an amazing charity fan magazine that we just put out last month (and that you can STILL ORDER BECAUSE WE'VE EXTENDED THE SALEEEEE!) and I thought it could use a prologue to give it a little more context (or, uh. possible less, but?? oh well) (and tbh I kind of forgot I'd written this, until I unearthed it five seconds ago while i was organizing my files, but, you know?)
> 
> (anyway, voila)
> 
> you can find more deets about the zine here! https://thirteenfanzine.tumblr.com/post/186375945734/sale-extension. It's a really wonderful project put together by some truly wonderful people to support a worthy cause, so definitely check it out if you haven't got the chance yet!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


	6. carried away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can't believe i invented a chemical weapon that makes you hold your friends smh
> 
> ANYWAY this is for sara bc i love her and it is,,,,,,V silly, and not beta-ed, but i stand by it and i hope u enjoy!

“So, let me get this straight,” Graham said, with a look on his face that implied he was both regretting his life choices and his inability to reach the sandwich hiding in his front jacket pocket. “If we let go of each other’s hands, we’ll all die.”

“Yep,” the Doctor said cheerfully, wedged under Yaz’s chin, unbothered as she used both her free hand and the one attached to Yaz herself to adjust the sonic. The whole business looked rather fiddly, Yaz thought. Though the Doctor seemed confident that whatever she was doing with both of their hands would eventually break them out of the concrete cell block they’d found themselves in. “Didn’t realize before, but this planet’s in the midst of a deadly humanitarian conflict. Well, I say humanitarian, you know what I mean. Huge advances in chemical warfare during this time period, and they’ve managed to come up with—”

“Something that makes it so you have to grab hold of your best mate in order not to die,” Ryan finished, deadpan. “Wow. Why didn’t we ever come up with that.”

“It’s not quite,” the Doctor corrected, oblivious to his tone, still squinting down at the sonic, “as simple as that. We’re all roughly humanoid, so the affect is variable. That being said,” she continued, looking up at all of them briefly, very seriously, “don’t let go of each other, no matter what.”

Yaz shifted, nose wrinkling as some of the Doctor’s hair tickled her nose. She’d wedged herself in tightly to get a better angle on the sonic while they were both attached to one another, and had fewer qualms than Yaz thought she probably should have had about the whole thing, considering she was all but sitting in Yaz’s lap.

“What’s the logic, though?” Yaz wondered, wincing as her wrist was manoeuvred in a direction it wasn’t necessarily meant to. The Doctor brought their hands and the sonic closer to her face, nose wrinkling. “Why not just stick to—I don’t know, mustard gas or something.”

“Halassians are sort of worm-people, remember,” the Doctor said, absently. “Though actually that’s a bit rude, isn’t it. Invertebrate-people. People? Worm-adjacent beings. Well, strictly speaking, they’re—”

“Doctor,” Ryan said, pained.

She glanced up, knocking Yaz’s chin with her head.

“Easier targets,” she said pointedly. “Best way to shoot all your enemies is to get them all in one big wormy lump. Well, I say wormy, I mean—”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, teeth aching with the impact. She pressed her chin tiredly into the crown of her head.

“Don’t let go!” she reiterated. “That’s the point. Lose the skin-to-skin contact and your nervous system will throw a fit, even though you’re only slightly worm-adjacent, it’s actually a bit barbaric, isn’t it?” She sighed, leaning back ever so slightly into Yaz’s chest as she peered into the sonic. “Making people—well, not exactly people, but you catch my drift—hold onto each other so you can kill them better.” She was cold, Yaz was noticing. Not just her hands, which Yaz was slightly more familiar with, on account of the Doctor did occasionally grab hold of all of them and drag them along with her when they weren’t moving fast enough for her liking, but the whole of her. It was like being sort of sat on by a very spindly iceberg that was also attempting to use your own hand as a sort of extra multi-tool, and it was very much _not_ —

Well, she thought, her breath ruffling the top of the Doctor’s hair. It wasn’t precisely how she’d imagined getting close to the Doctor. Not that she’d imagined. Well, not that she’d imagined _very much_. It was on the whole, she thought, a fairly conservative amount of imagining, all things considered. It never did to get too carried away with anything like that, especially when the reality—

A sharp elbow jammed its way under her rib as the Doctor twisted again, the sonic beeping alarmingly.

“Almost got it,” she muttered, heedless of Yaz’s muffled groan. “Hang tight, fam.”

“What I don’t understand,” Graham said, still looking faintly resigned, his grip dry in her own, “is why you and Ryan get to have the end. Why are Yaz and I stuck holding two hands and you both only have to have one?”

“I need the free hand, in case I trip,” Ryan protested, though he was looking a little bit too pleased about the whole thing. A little bit too pleased about the Doctor half-sitting in Yaz’s lap too, but so far her pointed glares had been enough to keep him at bay.

“It’s safer if we’re all attached to each other,” the Doctor murmured absently. “Two hands are better than one, isn’t that the saying? Or three, in this case,” she said, bashing her head into Yaz’s chin again as she glanced up, beaming. “Right, Yaz?”

“Yep,” Yaz wheezed.

“And besides, I need a free hand,” she continued, her beaming smile turning a hair triumphant. “So that I can do _this_.”

As if on queue, she pointed her free hand straight at the heavy metal doors, the sonic piercing, the metal groaning as it was forced apart.

“Aha!” she shouted, jumping to her feet, and Yaz found herself dragged upwards alongside, shoulder wrenching in her socket. “How d’you like _that_!”

Also as if on queue, a distant alarm began wailing. Yaz felt the thud of—well, footsteps wasn’t quite the right word, was it. However worms moved, it made a sound, and it moved the ground. She watched the Doctor’s face fall slightly.

“Ah,” she said. “Right. Probably should’ve—thought that through a bit better. Come on, gang!”

She dragged Yaz behind her as she took off, knuckles white around Yaz’s fingers. Like a demented sort of daisy-chain—or, she thought tiredly, a string of toddlers on leashes, being goaded across the road—they followed, ungainly.

“Quickly now!,” the Doctor shouted behind her, hair slapping her in the face as she twisted her neck. Delighted, wild-eyed panic had settled in behind her eyes, like it always did when they had to run. “Get a shift on, and whatever you do—”

“Don’t let go!” Ryan finished, keeping pace with Yaz, shaking his head fondly as they ran. Graham took up the rear between them, looking decidedly less delighted about the whole affair.

“What about all them hills outside?” he demanded, risking a glance behind them as they stumbled towards the exit. The Halassians moved rather quickly for worms. Invertebrate-people. Worm-adjacent-beings. _Whatever_. “We can’t burrow into ‘em like these blokes!”

“Up and over,” the Doctor shot back cheerfully, pointing her sonic arm in the direction of the door. “You’ll be fine, just hang on!”

“Oh, for—” he muttered, but the words were swallowed by the wind as they hit the outdoors. The Halassians built everything into hills and mountains, and they emerged out the side of a very large hill-fort, rusted metal domes protruding from cragged, grassy hills. It would have been very Tolkien, honestly—well. Giant talking worms aside.

“Do these worm-people have long-range weapons?” Ryan asked, as they stumbled together back towards where the TARDIS had landed, just on the edge of what they’d quickly discovered was contested territory.

“They’re not strictly speaking,” the Doctor began, hardly out of breath, trying in vain to move her hands in their usual ‘I’m About To Explain Something Very Quickly And My Hands Are Going To Help Me Do It’ position. Yaz allowed herself to be yanked forward resignedly.

“ _Doctor_ ,” she said.

“I don’t know!” she answered, still out-pacing them without breaking a sweat. Her cool grip stayed constant. “I suppose we’re about to find out. I wouldn’t imagine they’d really need them for this sort of thing, on account of the—”

A few metres ahead of them, a giant, armoured, talking worm burst out of the hill they’d been about to crest.

“—burrowing,” the Doctor finished, nose wrinkling, darting to the left. They veered with her. “Come on! Last hill!”

They darted over another smaller hill that Yaz suspected was the equivalent of a residential home, and as they crested the top, worms coalescing behind them at an alarmingly rapid pace, she glimpsed the TARDIS in the distance, small and blue at the bottom.

“No time to waste,” the Doctor said, glancing back at them, still far too cheerful, eyes catching on the hoard of worms nearly at their heels. “Sorry about this. Hold on tight!”

She took a flying leap with a muffled cry of what Yaz dearly hoped wasn’t ‘ _yeet_ ’, Yaz still grasped in her hand, Graham and Ryan flailing behind, a paper-chain of limbs. They stumbled down the hill all together in a chaotic tumble of arms and legs and coats, determined not to let go of each other. Yaz felt her shoulders wrench in their sockets, felt her elbows and knees catch on the uneven ground painfully, felt stronger arms wrap protectively around her with a cold, inhuman grip.

When they finally reached the bottom, for a moment, there was only silence and the sound of laboured breathing.

“Ah,” the Doctor said, slightly chagrined, wrapped around Yaz in a way that reminded her a bit of an octopus. She had her other hand scrunched white-knuckled in Ryan’s coat, an ankle wrapped around Graham’s leg. “All in one piece, everyone?”

Graham let his head impact the ground, exhaling.

“ABBA,” he sighed. “Eurovision. I want Eurovision, 1979 next, Doc. No worms. No weird neuro-toxins. Just Waterloo and a lot of sequins.”

The Doctor strained her neck to glance behind them, up the hill.

“Absolutely,” she promised, squinting. “But first, I’d reckon we’re not quite done running yet.”

They rose to their feet in a tangled, bruised collective and stumbled towards the TARDIS, who opened her doors just as the hoard of armoured worms came roaring down the hill after them.

“Quickly now,” the Doctor said, yanking Yaz (and also Graham, and also Ryan) along the console as she frantically pulled down levers and used Yaz’s hand to ham-fistedly press buttons as she went along. “Not quite as simple as it usually is, come on, love—”

With a wheeze and a groan that Yaz couldn’t help but think sounded rather amused, the TARDIS dematerialised, leaving Halas to its worm-people and their humanitarian crisis.

Graham sagged against the console. The Doctor looked down at Yaz’s hand in her own with an unreadable expression. There were bits of grass caught in her hair. Yaz could feel a bruise forming on her own chin, though she suspected it wasn’t from their tumble down the hill.

“Probably ought to have stuck around and helped,” the Doctor muttered, after a moment. “But that place reeked of fixed points in time. I’ve a feeling this war they’re having is a rather important one.”

“Pretty nasty,” Ryan admitted, shoulders rolling with leftover tension. Some of the amusement at their situation had left his face. “Like you said. Makin’ people hold onto each other so you can kill ‘em better.”

“They’ll learn,” the Doctor said, looking up, a bit brighter. Warm, in the glow of the TARDIS, though her touch was still cool. It was comforting, though, Yaz decided, squeezing her fingers reassuringly before she could overthink it. Familiar. “You always do.”

Graham frowned. “Human beings ain’t worm-people, Doc.”

“Strictly speaking, they’re _not_ —”

“I think I get what you mean,” Yaz smoothed, stepping closer into their reluctant circle. “And you’re right. We do learn.”

“Does this mean we can all let go of each other’s hands now,” Ryan ventured, wiggling the fingers he still had grasped in Graham’s experimentally.

The Doctor’s head snapped to him. “No!” she said. “Absolutely not. It’ll wear off on it’s own, but not for a few hours. Until then, we’ve all got to stay attached. There’s no dying allowed on my TARDIS. I’ve put a death embargo in place, I won’t have it.”

“Bloody hell,” Graham said, swallowing a yawn. “Really, Doc? I’m knackered.”

She looked to him, slack-jawed in disbelief.

“You’re not going to sleep,” she protested, face falling into despair at the chorus of yawns that joined him. “No, no way, humans sleep for _ages_ —”

“Come on, Doc,” Graham said, leading the way for the first time in hours. “I think we’ve earned this rest. Besides, nothing much else to do while we wait for this business to be over with.”

Graham’s logic, while occasionally fuelled by sandwich-based irrationality, was usually fairly inarguable. They all stumbled behind him as he lead the way to the library, seemingly confident that for once the TARDIS might actually oblige him with the right door on the first try. He gestured at the handle with raised eyebrows and Ryan sighed, twisting it open with his free hand.

Yaz smiled at the warm air and the musty smell of books and chlorine as they all tried to squeeze through the door together, tumbling through chaotically but without injury. No one fell into the pool, at least, and so she was going to count it as a win. The fireplace was lit and crackling, and the worn sofa was free of the usual debris of magazines and abandoned card games. Like the TARDIS had realized they were short a few hands.

“My back ain’t gonna like this,” Graham muttered, but it was more for show than anything else. He sank into the sofa with a contented smile on his face, legs crossing in front of the fire, Ryan’s hand clasped carefully in his own. “Night, son,” he yawned. “Night, you two. Thanks for getting us out of that mess, Doc.”

“Sorry for getting you into it,” she said, with a smile of her own. “Though I should note…”

She settled beside Yaz gingerly, already half-fidgeting, quietly rambling her way into a lecture on the differences between earth worms and other extraterrestrial invertebrates. Ryan slumped onto the end seat without a pause, sinking down, knees toward the fire. He dragged his toque down over his face.

Yaz yawned and leaned her head back against the sofa, feeling oddly safe. It was a bit of a poor fit, all of them squished together like sardines, and she was pressed between someone who might as well have been her own grandad and the equivalent of an icicle that couldn’t stop talking, and if she let go of either of them, she’d die in a matter of seconds.

She swallowed back a laugh, shoulders shaking.

The Doctor’s hand was chilly in her grasp.

“Alright, Yaz?” she interrupted herself, eyes honey-warm in the firelight. Her cold fingers squeezed, comfortingly.

Yaz smiled, shaking her head.

“No,” she said. “I’m brilliant.”

The Doctor broke out into a grin. Her free hand came up to tap her on the nose.

“Can’t argue,” she agreed. Her expression scrunched. “I am sorry about the worms.”

“I know.”

“And about the running.”

“I know.”

“And about the—”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, though she was still smiling. “ _Goodnight_.”

Her mouth closed. She softened. “Goodnight,” she said, still sounding slightly reluctant about the whole idea. The hand holding Yaz’s shifted as Yaz closed her eyes, and she drifted off to the rhythmic tapping of the Doctor’s boot against the floor.

“Am I meant to just—” she heard, just as she’d almost fallen asleep.

Yaz kicked her in the shin. Fondly.

“ _Goodnight_ , Doctor,” she murmured, smiling at the despairing sigh coming from her right. For a long, quiet moment, there was only stillness. Then, tentative, she felt the Doctor shuffle in closer and tuck herself back under Yaz’s abused chin, hearts beating solid against her chest.

Not quite what she’d imagined, still. But then again, she thought sleepily, a cold hand still intertwined with hers. She smiled. It never did do, to get too carried away.

The fire crackled, warm and comforting, and she fell asleep, bruised and slightly poisoned, sardine-in-a-can happy.


	7. somewhere the tea is getting cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S12 spoilers. The Doctor's not looking for a friend, but Najia's Mum Skillz aren't to be messed with.

She was halfway through the first of the various soaps she liked to record throughout the week when the doorbell rang.

Najia frowned. Sundays—Sunday afternoons, in particular, when her family was out and there was no dinner to salvage, no tea to make, no problems to listen to—were sacred. Well. Not _sacred_ -sacred, but sacred to her. The only time she got to do anything as frivolous as catch up on television that the rest of her family would only poke fun at her for enjoying.

Not that she could blame them, even, and not that she’d ever admit it, but there was just something _appealing_ about other people’s problems. Even if they were outrageous and imaginary. Najia was practical to a fault, and down-to-earth despite herself, mostly to keep match with her husband, who lived with his head in the clouds, bless him—but even she couldn’t resist the odd escape.

She sighed and set down the remote, rising to her feet. Escape, interrupted. Irritation grew in her stomach, settling there as she opened the door. It wasn’t a package, or a neighbour, or anyone else she could justify slamming the door on. Instead, Yaz’s odd, inexplicably middle-aged friend was stood there, hands clasped together awkwardly. Out of place in the watery light of the hall. Out of place everywhere, maybe, she mused absently, almost feeling a bit sorry before the irritation in her gut won the match.

“Yaz’s mum!” she said, surprised. Her hands twisted together even harder. Her eyes weren’t quite all there. No hug, this time.

“Najia,” Najia said, tiredly. “What are you doing here, Doctor? Is there something going on?”

The hands twisted again, like she was realizing that she’d interrupted, somehow. “Er,” she hesitated. “No. No spiders or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. Is Yaz in? I know it’s not Saturday, only I—well, I—”

Her mouth opened and closed, gaping like a fish for a moment until she finally shut it firmly, the thought incomplete.

Najia felt a chill of unease, despite herself. “She’s at work,” she said, more gently than she felt.

The Doctor’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “Right. Right, ‘course. Well, I’ll—”

But she blinked again, trailing off. Like she hadn’t bothered to consider the idea that Yaz wouldn’t be just behind the door, waiting. There was a thin layer of rust-coloured dust, Najia noted, caught in the wisp of her hair. Caught delicately in the seams of her coat, its sleeves, in the tread of her boots. Her nose was sunburnt in the middle of autumn. The curve of her cheek was sharper than it had been the last time they’d met. She looked exhausted. Irritation lost the match to more unease.

Pity, maybe.

Against her better judgement, probably, Najia edged the door open a hair wider. “Why don’t you come in and wait for her?” she offered. The Doctor might have been odd, and she still couldn’t quite understand what held together Yaz’s eclectic assortment of friends— _Ryan_ , she understood, but his granddad as well? And the Doctor, by all accounts a woman in her mid-thirties who didn’t seem to have a steady job or a dress-sense—but she wasn’t dangerous. In fact, all things considered, given her proficiency in fending off giant spiders, things were probably safer with her around. “I’ll put on the kettle.”

The Doctor faltered. “Oh, I—” she tried, shifting, and there was terrible uncertainty crawling across her face. Unease, in turn, maybe.

“I insist,” Najia said, for unclear reasons. “It’s no trouble.” It was, in fact. “She’ll be home by four.”

The unease wavered, but stuck in the line of the Doctor’s mouth. Like she knew she wasn’t entirely welcome but desperately wanted to be.

“I’ll set out the biscuits, too,” Najia said. For whatever reason, that did it.

“Well,” the Doctor said, brightening. “If you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

“It’s not,” she reassured. It still was, a bit.

The Doctor left her boots by the door, revealing two garishly mismatched socks, and trailed behind her into the kitchen, nosing around half-heartedly while Najia mustered mugs out of the cupboard, flipped the kettle switch.

“No more rubbish,” she noted, glancing underneath the cabinet. “Found anything else exciting, lately, Yaz’s dad?”

“Just the usual,” Najia muttered, but it was fond despite herself. She nudged her way past the island. “Take a seat, if you’d like.”

The Doctor didn’t. “Is anyone else here?” she asked, peering out the kitchen window with genuine interest. Gloomy Sheffield lay just beyond. Najia bent to nab the biscuits, frowning, not quite sure what the appeal of the view was.

“Just me, Sunday afternoons,” she explained. “Everyone else is out, usually, so I get some peace and quiet.”

The Doctor turned with a frown in turn, brow furrowing. Uncertain, again. “Oh,” she said. “I could—I’m—”

“It’s fine,” Najia said again. She dumped some biscuits out onto a plate. “Really. Sugar?”

The answer to that was yes, and she averted her eyes in mild horror as the Doctor proceeded to dump what seemed like half the sugar bowl into her tea, with a contemplative, silent deliberation. She was much quieter than Najia remembered, and it set the unease in her gut simmering again. _Small-talk_ , she thought, a tad desperate, though from what she remembered it wasn’t one of the Doctor’s strong suits. Something innocuous to shatter through the oddness. The problem was, the Doctor didn’t _fit_. She hadn’t fit at the hotel, hadn’t fit in Najia’s car, didn’t fit in Najia’s kitchen. She’d been too big, too bright and loud for the space last time. This time, she was shrunk away from it, unnerving in a different way.

“Where did you come here from?” she tried, stirring a splash of milk into her own mug, eyes catching again on that light layer of dust and sand. She couldn’t remember a beach like that anywhere close.

The Doctor paused, mug half-way to her lips. Blinking again, an animal caught in the headlights. Too slow to react.

“Home,” she said eventually, like she was testing the word out on her tongue.

“Oh?” Najia set the plate of biscuits between them, feeling slightly nosy, but unable to quite stop herself. “That’s nice. For the week? Yaz said you haven’t been round since last Saturday.”

“Er,” the Doctor wavered for some reason. Getting a straight answer from her was like pulling teeth, and wasn’t that odd and new as well? She remembered the woman talking a mile a minute, the last time they’d met. Volunteering information—however nonsensical—with ease. “Yeah,” she settled on, easing herself into a rickety smile. “For the week.”

Najia pressed on, determined to steer their way through the stilted conversation. “Do you have kids, then? Spouse?” _Very_ nosy, but she was a parent. It was a valid question, surely. Maybe at the least it would give them something to talk about.

But what little brightness the mention of the biscuits had wrought was seeping out of the Doctor rapidly, hunching in her shoulders. The line of her mouth had turned thin and wary with reluctance.

“No,” she said after a moment, growing still. “Not anymore.”

Najia cursed her foot in her mouth, opening her mouth to apologise—

“Not—for a long time,” the Doctor tried, in reassurance, maybe, but it all looked like such effort. Swimming upstream against a current. Even as Najia watched, she was disappearing into her own eyes. Losing her grip. There was rust-coloured dirt caught under her nails, the crevices of her palm.

Without thinking, Najia reached out to take the mug from her hands as it nearly trembled out from her grasp.

“Sorry,” the Doctor said, haltingly, reeling herself back in. “You know what, I’ll—I’ll just wait—”

“On the sofa,” Najia said firmly, taking the mug, suddenly certain that whatever was going on, whatever her misgivings might have been, the Doctor wasn’t someone who should have been off wandering on her own right now. “I like to watch my soaps, Sunday afternoons. Go on, then,” she said, still firm, since it was the only tone of voice that seemed to work. “I’ll bring the tea over.”

 _I don’t trust your hands_ , she thought.

She watched relief turn to wariness turn to—something she didn’t recognize. Defeat, maybe, but there was an edge of something grateful to it. The Doctor wore her heart on her sleeve—or at least on her face—but Najia was getting the sense that it didn’t actually help much, when it came to deciphering her. She was an open book that no one could read.

“Go on,” she urged again, and watched the back of those lonely shoulders as she edged her way uncertainly to the sofa. Najia followed with the tea and the biscuits, flicking on her soaps again as the Doctor settled stiffly on the sofa’s edge. Uncomfortable—with their proximity, with sitting in general, it could have been anything. Her eyes were still on a ten-second delay. But Najia pressed the mug back into her hands and curled up on the sofa’s other side, settling back with a sigh.

The Doctor, she realized quickly, had never seen a soap before, and clearly wasn’t quite sure what to make of them, but she caught on to the nuances of the plots with ease. Fit all the pieces together like she might a jigsaw. It would have been annoying, the constant interruptions as she puzzled things out, but Najia found herself oddly charmed. No one else in her family tended to bother even pretending to be engaged with anything she enjoyed.

“—wait, so that’s—”

“Noelle’s baby, right.”

“But Noelle’s married to Charlie, and—”

“—he’s not the father, exactly—”

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathed, popping a biscuit absently into her mouth. “Human beings,” she muttered, nonsensically. “This is brilliant.”

Najia’s backlog of _Coronation Street_ played out as the afternoon dragged on, and the air slowly grew less tense. By the time they’d finished _EastEnders_ and the plate of biscuits, it almost felt like she was watching with someone she might have called a friend. By the time _Emmerdale_ began to play—

She turned her head to ask a question and found the Doctor’s head sprawled against the back of the sofa, gently snoring. The mug of tea in her lap had long grown cold. Najia retrieved it carefully before it could spill. For a moment, she only watched. Slack with sleep, the Doctor’s face looked far younger. 

Unease fumbled with concern in the base of her throat. She turned down the volume, pulled down the window shades, and tossed a blanket over the Doctor’s sleeping form. She was probably going to wake up with the most awful neck cramp.

Still, Najia didn’t disturb her. She looked like she might have needed the sleep. Instead, she settled back into her corner of the sofa to wait, and let the gentle fuzz of noise from the television wash over her comfortingly until Yaz came through the door, just as four rolled around.

She scrambled quietly to her feet as she heard the key in the lock.

“Shh,” she warned, as Yaz made her way into the hall, hair half-way undone, a pin held in her mouth.

“What—” Yaz started, but froze as she caught sight of her sleeping friend. Her eyes widened. “ _Shh_ ,” she hissed, hilariously, one hand clamping down on Najia’s upper arm. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “What’s she doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Najia said lowly, leading her into the kitchen. Yaz kept a hand on her arm still, glancing back over her shoulder, disbelieving. “Yaz, your friend—is she alright?”

To her dismay, Yaz’s face fell, mouth twisting.

“No,” she said, still whispering. She let go of Najia’s arm, finally, and pressed her nose into her shoulder instead with a heaving sigh. Najia grasped the back of her head reassuringly, and took out the last two pins in her hair while she was there. “But she won’t say what’s wrong,” Yaz mumbled into her shoulder. “None of us know how to help.”

“Sometimes, all you can do is try,” Najia said, keeping a hand around the back of Yaz’s neck, even as she tilted back up from Najia’s shoulder, miserable. “Sometimes, helping is just—being there.”

“Yeah?” Those big, shiny eyes stared up at her. Yaz was so stoic, so serious all the time, that it was easy to forget how young she still was. Even for her mother, sometimes. Najia smiled ruefully.

“Yes,” she said. “Take it from someone who knows.”

Yaz’s brows knit together, not entirely comforted—but her gaze drifted past Najia’s shoulder, into the sitting room. The remains of _Emmerdale_ were still playing out fuzzily, quietly into the gloom. The Doctor’s gentle snoring permeated.

“We’ve been trying to get her to sleep for weeks,” Yaz whispered, awed.“How’d you do it?”

“Tell you what,” Najia said, sighing. At the periphery of other people’s problems, always, but then—maybe that was where she liked to be. “Bring her back next Sunday afternoon,” she smiled. “And I’ll show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like a key aspect of 13's character is that she so often offers to leave when she really, really would rather do anything but and i hate that for her but love that for us rip lmao
> 
> anyway, happy saturday! i barely proof-read this so apologies in advance. also, mama watches coronation street on occasion but i have No Idea what it's actually about so my Soap Accuracy is likely,,,,,,,,Inaccurate. either way, hope you enjoyed and i'd love to know wha you thought!


	8. and they did live by watchfires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graham and the Doctor have a chat in the wake of their latest adventure, at the mouth of their next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmm spoilers here for The Haunting of Villa Diodati. Quick, short, barely edited, you know the drill. I wanted something that would encompass the all-encompassing dread I'm feeling about Sunday (i'm not alone right?? we're all living in fear? okay good)
> 
> rip lmao also wbk a binch can't really write anything except these two clowns having a Vague Upsetting Conversation ('Two Friends Each Secretly Thinks Of Other Friend As Their Grandchild') ALSO also wbk a binch can't really write any proper h/c either. I've been trying to get the Doctor a hug for weeks and it Just Ain't Happening. (Hopefully canon comes through on that front sometime soon or I might actually lose it.)
> 
> either way, I hope you enjoy, thank you so much for reading, and please let me know what you thought!

If Graham was honest with himself, he was still half-expecting her to change her mind.

She’d shooed them away to struggle out of their layers of rain-soaked period clothes without another word, Yaz’s sheet of Shelley’s mad etchings clenched in her hand, and now, a cravat down and certain that he’d left his jumper in the console room, he lingered at the stairs. He could see it, where it was innocuously draped across a bit of the console, red, warm. It would be easy to grab. Three steps down, a brief acknowledgement, and then he could finally get back into something without five layers and far too many buttons.

Only—

Wherever they were headed, it looked as though they hadn’t gone anywhere at all, yet. She’d shrugged off her coat to the ground, draped her scarf across a pillar, was fumbling with the buttons of her waistcoat, failing. Blue in the gloom. The TARDIS liked to dim, when the rest of them weren’t around. Unease swam in his gut as he watched her struggle, as she sagged against the console, one bony elbow between her and the ground. Alone.

“Thin air,” he wondered, as she started in surprise, “on the top of your mountain?”

He half-expected a glare, but when she looked up reluctantly to face him, her expression was only faintly irritated. There was a thin trail of blood creeping lazily from one nostril, encroaching on her upper lip.

“ _Doc_ ,” he said, traipsing down the steps, unease curdling to alarm.

“I thought you were getting changed,” she said as he approached, nose wrinkling, fingers still caught in the buttons of her waistcoat. “Weren’t you wearing a cravat? I used to wear a cravat,” she offered, only flinching a little as his hand found her elbow. His other lingered near her fingers, where they trembled by her chest. Still half-tangled in buttons.

“Doc,” he tried again.

“Only people kept choking me with it,” she muttered. Her eyes flashed briefly in his direction again, quicksilver, a bit deranged. “Weren’t you changing? Leaving?” She straightened her elbow with a pointed glare, took a very certain step away from the console, and nearly fell flat on her face when her knees buckled immediately. He caught her gracelessly and nearly took an elbow to the face for his trouble, because the Doc was all arms and legs, a gangly, terrible thing, like her limbs were always an afterthought. She ran like an idiot, and fell like one, too. He lowered them both to the ground, his back aching, his knees in protest. She wrenched out of his careful grasp and leaned her head bonelessly against the base of the console, looking irritated. Pained.

“Are you alright?” he asked, not expecting a proper answer.

He didn’t get one, but that was par for the course these days. She only looked away, hair falling to cover the side of her face, and some of the suspicion that had been traitorously lurking in the pit of his stomach solidified into nausea.

“This is ‘cos of what you did to that poor Shelley boy, isn’t it,” he said quietly.

“Old tricks always come with a price.” Her eyes flicked to him again, glittering through that curtain of hair. “Just desserts?” She smiled, a bit meanly. “You’d be well within your rights to think it.”

“You know I don’t,” he said, more evenly than he felt. “But I think you might.”

The smile dropped. Her lips pressed together, resigned. Still irritated. He could read it in the stiffness of her shoulders, the sharp turn of her mouth. She never liked to fall where they could see. Even as he watched her carefully, she swiped a thumb under her nose, smeared the red away, ashamed. Unease kept at a slow curdle in his gut.

“It wasn’t a very kind thing to to do,” she whispered eventually. “Especially to someone who didn’t deserve it.”

“Who would ever deserve it?” he wondered, though maybe that wasn’t the point. “Who decides?” Ah, but there it was. “You?”

His breath caught. Beside him, she was very still. Unnaturally so. He’d stumbled onto the wrong question. Or the right one, maybe.

“Who else?” she spat finally, bitter. And maybe she was right. He didn’t have a better answer, was the thing. What would he have done, down there, in the dark, in that cavern? Would he have chosen differently, would he have chosen _right_?

Sometimes there were no good choices. But someone still had to choose. Only—

“Why?” he asked. Pushing his luck. _Too many questions_ , an echoing snarl, half-remembered. She was so oddly fragile, lately. Press too hard, she’d shatter, and the shards would make you bleed. It had been easier, before. She’d liked them better at a distance, and it ached in his gut.

A trembling hand rose up to push away the hair covering her face, grind a palm into her pinched brow. She leaned further into the base of the console, like maybe she was hoping it would swallow her so that she could avoid the rest of the conversation.

“I never thought of what to say to you,” she admitted, when it didn’t. Dodging. A non-answer. “I never thought of something comforting.”

“I didn’t come to you for comfort,” he admitted in turn. “I told you what I did because that’s what friends do.” _I was trying to show you_ , he didn’t say. _I was trying to show you how to do it, how easy it can be_. “I didn’t expect nothing except for you to listen, and you did.”

The sharp line of her mouth gentled, but she still didn’t look at him. She wasn’t listening, quite. Wasn’t hearing.

“I could never think of anything to say, because I have no idea how it feels,” she said. “To be so mortal. Ephemeral. What happened to you, what _frightens_ you, it’s so far outside my own experience I can hardly imagine it.”

“Well, ta, thanks,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. She winced, nose wrinkling.

“That’s not quite—” she tried, chagrined.“See, I’ve done it again. Sorry.”

“Is that why?” he pressed, not quite angry. “You’re above us all, undying, that’s what gives you the right? Alone at the top, because you’re better.” But there was blood trailing mutinously onto her upper lip, a slow crawl.

“No,” she said firmly. “Because _you’re_ better.” She met his gaze, finally. Tentative, out of the corner of her eyes. “And you shouldn’t have to choose,” she said softly. “That’s why.”

She was always absorbing the blow for them, somehow. Pressed behind her body, thrown behind her, wrapped away, as safe as she could make it. Safe from the decisions she made all the time, safe in the false promise that they’d somehow helped make them. A one-woman show.

Coming down around her ears, for weeks, now. He felt sorry for her, suddenly. Sharp pain in his gut, pity thin and narrow. _You’ve done this to yourself_ , he thought, but didn’t say. He didn’t think she’d appreciate it. He wasn’t sure she’d even be able to hear it.

“But we did make a choice, Doc,” he told her gently. “A long time ago. Whatever we’re walking into, you remember that.”

She stilled utterly, pale. Queasy.

“You could make another,” she whispered. “Let me take you back home, Graham.”

“You’re still bleeding,” he said.

He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket. Proffered it. She glanced at it dully, where it waited in his hand, for a long moment. Looked up at him, very old, very tired. She was good at hiding it, he had to admit. She knew to brush her hair, slap on a smile, play like everything was fine. Sometimes, she was even convincing. In the shadows, at the mouth of the end, drenched in guilt, she was horrifying. Cheekbones sharp, eyes cavernous.

Sometimes, even she couldn’t win. She took the handkerchief. Glanced away, despair squirrelled away in the corners of her lips as she swiped it under her nose.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You should go get changed. Get some rest.”

“And what about you?” he protested quietly, doubtful.

She plastered a thin smile over the disquiet. “I’ll be fine. Just need a kip.”

“You don’t sleep anymore, Doc,” he said tiredly. “Everyone knows that.”

The smile faded. She looked uncertain, in the face of the truth. Had she thought it wasn’t obvious?

“Pretend, then,” she said, sharp, turning like the wind.

He struggled to his feet with a muffled groan, partly in protest, partly because his knees couldn’t take much more of the ground. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

“Because I’m askin’.” She ground her fingers into the console and dragged herself upright too, inch by inch, until she stood hunched and ragged. “Because I need you to.” She breathed out sharply. “Turn around, go to bed. Forget this happened.”

He took a step back, thinking traitorously of the poor Shelley boy, her bony fingers clamped to his temple like a vise. By the look on her face, she noticed. Her brow pinched.

“Doc,” he said, pity and unease warring queasily in his stomach.

“Please.” And she looked so tired, but he knew that if he did as she asked, if he turned away, if he forgot, pretended, swallowed the lie, he could bound back into the console room in the morning and find her reset entirely. Hair combed, clothes clean. Blood washed away. She made it so easy.

“Things can’t go on like this,” he said quietly.

“I know.” Her voice stayed even, until it didn’t. He’d pressed too hard. “I know, but I _can’t_. Just—” She swallowed thickly. “Just pretend. A little longer, please, just pretend.” Her breath hitched. “You’re my friend, Graham.”

 _Am I?_ He wanted to ask, but it didn’t seem fair.

“You need us,” he said.

She nodded, still breathing sharp. “Yes.”

He frowned. “Doc, if you’d just let us—”

“I can’t,” she cut him off, mouth twisting. “Graham, please, I can’t. No more questions. Just—”

Shatter. Tread carefully. He remembered his mother, suddenly, shooing him out of the kitchen, the tin whistle pitch of breaking glass. Sunlight catching in the shards on the floor. It did no good, to cut yourself on it.

Heart heavy in his gut, he took his jumper off the console, soft in his hands.

“You should sleep, cockle,” he said quietly. “If you can.”

She ducked away, hair back in front of her face. Hands white around the console, relief in the slump of her shoulders. She could only rest while they weren’t looking. He supposed that would have to do, for now.

“Goodnight,” she whispered.

He climbed the stairs slowly, one at a time. Dread settled in his stomach like lead, pity, unease floating on top like oil. He couldn’t win, every time.

“Goodnight, Doc,” he said.


End file.
